Currently, many labor-intensive businesses have up-to-the-minute staffing needs, wherein staff are typically drawn from a “bench” or “pool” responsive to dynamically varying demand. Such businesses include, but are by no means limited to, business-to-business services such as traditional consulting, design, technical support (typically for products), call center operations, IT implementation and IT outsourcing. Different workers of course will present different characteristics (e.g., skill level in one or more disciplines) as well as different schedules of availability. Accordingly, service providers typically encounter great difficulty in optimally matching “bench” workers with businesses demanding their services, especially in a manner that is time- and cost-efficient.